DescriptionOver the past decade, clinical documentation improvement (CDI) programs have undergone quite an evolution and continue to evolve even today, particularly as the implementation of the new International Classification of Diseases, version 10 (ICD-10) system draws near. Before the Prospective Payment System (PPS) was established, Physicians focused on taking care of their patients without concerning themselves about quality or detailed documentation. They were reimbursed by Insurance companies without in-depth enquiries about services provided. With the introduction of the PPS, quality of patient care, length of stay during admission, severity of illness, and risk of mortality, became important benchmarks. CDI software models became more and more necessary as more hospitals adopted CDI programs to assist in improving Physician documentation in the patient’s medical record. This study first describes the need for a comprehensive electronic CDI model. Secondly, descriptive statistics will be used to determine the relevance of the different metrics collected as data in the new CDI model. Then, analysis of the collected data will be performed using the MS-DRG severity level and APR-DRG severity level to show the effects and contributions of a functional CDI program in relation to a hospital’s reported and coded statistics. Consequently, results of descriptive statistics show that between 19 to 32.5 percent of queries were generated monthly as a result of inadequate documentation by Physicians in patients’ medical records in relation to the total number of records reviewed and entered in the CDI software by the CDI Specialists. Other results of analyses show that a good CDI program significantly and positively impacts on different hospital metrics like the accuracy of coded data, case mix index (CMI), length of stay (LOS), severity of illness (SOI), risk of mortality (ROM), and reimbursement. In conclusion, the results of this study reveal that a significant positive ripple effect is achieved when an efficient CDI program is implemented, and this notion should serve as a basis to obtain a comprehensive CDI model where data collection can be better utilized to positively impact patient outcomes.